Saturday, January 19, 2008

Last week before Robbie Burns 8K

It's always the same. The week before a race, any race, I keep thinking about "The Plan". How hard should I try? Up to now, I've been pretty conservative and I've always done better than planned.

I like the 2/3 plan where you follow a fairly conservative pace for the first 2/3 of the race and then decide how much to "unleashe". The thing is, once your actually racing, conservative is a relative term but I'm going to have to learn to stick to a race plan. In my December 5k, my so-called "Ultimate goal" was 24:59 and I finished in 23:44, a full minute faster than planned. I still ran fairly smart, with a faster second half. One could say I raced better than I planned.

Learning from my mistakes, I will now risk public humiliation and aim for a pace that I'm not entirely comfortable with. Live a little, as they say!

My plan for the week is to slow down a bit. I will skip my Friday quality run and just run a few easy kms with a couple of strides instead. Same on Saturday possibly on the threadmill.

Sunday. Ah, Sunday. I will go out at a blistering 4:50/km and maintain it to 5k, where I will decide what to do. If I feel ok, I will try to push down to 4:45. The last k, I will try to "sprint" under 4:40.

This best case scenario would give me a time of 38:20, give or take. An even 4:50 would give me 38:40. The thing is, I don't know that I can sustain 4:50 for that long. But it's time.